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A National Historic Landmarks Theme Study ASIAN AMERICAN

Finding a Path Forward ASIAN AMERICAN PACIFIC ISLANDER NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARKS THEME STUDY NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARKS THEME STUDY

Edited by Franklin Odo Use of ISBN This is the official U.S. Government edition of this publication and is herein identified to certify its authenticity. Use of 978-0-692-92584-3 is for the U.S. Government Publishing Office editions only. The of Documents of the U.S. Government Publishing Office requests that any reprinted edition clearly be labeled a copy of the authentic work with a new ISBN.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Odo, Franklin, editor. | National Historic Landmarks Program (U.S.), issuing body. | . National Park Service. Title: Finding a Path Forward, Asian American and Pacific Islander National Historic Landmarks theme study / edited by Franklin Odo. Other titles: Asian American and Pacific Islander National Historic Landmarks theme study | National historic landmark theme study. Description: Washington, D.C. : National Historic Landmarks Program, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2017. | Series: A National Historic Landmarks theme study | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017045212| ISBN 9780692925843 | ISBN 0692925848 Subjects: LCSH: National Historic Landmarks Program (U.S.) | Asian --. | Pacific Islander Americans--History. | United States--History. Classification: LCC E184.A75 F46 2017 | DDC 973/.0495--dc23 | SUDOC I 29.117:AS 4 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017045212

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ISBN 978-0-692-92584-3

ii AAPI National Historic Landmarks Theme Study Essay 2

A of : Early Foundations and Mobilities of Pacific Islanders

Amy Stillman Director, A/PIA Studies Program, of , Ann Arbor

n essay tasked with introducing the Pacific Islands and its inhabitants might begin by acknowledging late 20th century con- A structions that coupled together and Pacific Islanders. These range from political alliances, demographic initiatives, and socio-cultural formations that grow out of intersections of Asians and Pacific Islanders in communities as well as within the continental United States. Among the earliest scholarly endeavors, the “P” or “PI” appears in variant namings, such as in the first iteration of the Association for Studies (now Association for Asian American Studies) and, at this writing, the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. In the United States context, it is not difficult to connect Asian and Pacific Islander peoples conceptually via the geographic contiguity of the Asian and the Pacific . While doing so comes at the

Portrait of Kaneena, a chief of the Sandwich Islands in the North . Drawn by J. Webber; engraved by A.W. Warren, n.d.; courtesy of the Library of Congress.

A Sea of Islands: Early Foundations and Mobilities of Pacific Islanders 35 cost of effacing profound historical differences, an Japanese expansion eastward. Third, U.S. involvement absolute adherence to maintaining those very histor- in post-war economic reconstruction in (during ical distinctions also ignores more recent of which time the U.S. also took control of the Unit- intersection. Scholarship on and the Pacific Islands ed Nations-mandated Trust of the Pacific, is pursued in two distinctly separate interdisciplinary comprising multiple island groups across the northern fields with attending professional learned societies, Pacific stretching westward from Hawai‘i), followed publication venues, and claims on academic and insti- by subsequent geopolitics in and tutional resources. Asian Americans and Pacific Island- , carried over, even as Asian economies ers, especially in the U.S. Possessions, fall in the gaps rebounded. Fourth, by the 1990s, the between ideas of homeland authenticity and diasporic of multinational and transnational disconnection, and contrasting narratives of immigra- agreements operating beyond the reach of nation-based tion and indigeneity. The reception and representation regulation were encompassed in the terms “” of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. is also marked and the touting, especially in the , of a “Pacif- by juxtaposition. Asians have endured stereotypes of ic Century.” All of this took place despite the fact that “yellow peril” and “perpetual foreigner,” while Pacific the now linked largely passed over the islands1—a Islanders have historically been valued as desired objects reality made possible by advances in jet transportation of colonialist exoticness. and the capacity to eliminate mid-Pacific refueling stops. Three points of intersection between Asians and The incorporation of Pacific Islanders into a com- Pacific Islanders are relevant to this overview. First, sys- bined “Asian Pacific” construction has been uneven. tematic mass from Asia to the United States, Pacific Islanders have long protested the marginaliza- catalyzed by the 1848 discovery of gold in , tion and invisibility by—as well as among—their more took place through the Pacific Islands, when transpor- numerous Asian colleagues2 and have since successfully tation routes required provisioning stops between Asia negotiated incorporation into the Native American and . Second, Hawai‘i occupies a pivotal and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), formal- point, as capitalist sugar and pineapple plantations ly constituted in 2009. However, federal government brought Asian immigrant laborers in the 1860s, and the policy has been mixed. While and multiethnic plantation milieu became the basis for inter- other Pacific Islanders have been disaggregated from the racial marriage and a multicultural community forma- “Asian American” racial category on the U.S. Census, tion already well rooted by the time of the U.S. acquisi- the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and tion of Hawai‘i in 1898. Third, following War II, Pacific Islanders has maintained a coalition approach, the migration of Pacific Islanders from American-admin- and heritage month celebrations for Native Hawaiians istered areas—Native Hawaiians and Asian descendants and Pacific Islanders continue to be observed in May from Hawai‘i, along with , Guamanians, and with Asian Americans, rather than in with residents of the Trust Territory of the Pacific— to the Native Americans. continental United States produced various communi- Beyond considerations about how Pacific Island- ty formations. This was especially true along the west ers and Asian Americans have been grouped together coast, in proximity to neighborhoods settled by Asian bureaucratically, an orientation to Pacific Islanders immigrants, U.S.-born Asian descendants, and Japanese and their oceanic world inevitably casts light on Pacific Americans returning after internment. Islander distinctiveness from Asian cultures and histo- The 20th century development of U.S. political and ries. It also illuminates a key epistemological fault line economic power in the Pacific can be viewed between systems of knowledge through which Pacific in four steps. First, the U.S. possession of and Islanders have come to be known outside the region. Hawai‘i in 1898 and a portion of in 1899 marked From the advent of western European presence in the the formal establishment of U.S. in the Pacific in the early 1500s, the conduct of scholarship Pacific. Second, during II, the U.S. military and the circulation of knowledge about the region entered the war involving the Pacific Islands to curb were monopolized by the tenets of western European

36 AAPI National Historic Landmarks Theme Study Enlightenment rationality and empiricism. It has taken 2) volcanic activity as plates move over hot spots in the several generations of Pacific Islander-centered scholars ’s core, and volcanic activity results in mountainous since the later 20th century to place islander worldviews underwater ranges whose peaks rise above sea level.6 alongside those documented by outsiders.3 Where volcanic activity ceased, many islands eroded, The epochal perspective proposed in this essay pushing up coral reefs ringing the island above sea level takes European presence and Euro-American colonial- until only coral remained. ism as simply another era during which Pacific Islanders Within geological boundaries of the oceanic region, have continued to exist. This is in contradistinction to multiple approaches to defining “Pacific Islands” over generations of scholars who have figured the moments centuries of habitation have shifted based on migration of “first contact” between islanders and outsiders as and settlement patterns, along with the ebb and flow constitutive of radical rupture and irreversible alter- of with their structures of trade and tribute. ations in island societies after Euro-American colonial- Through various methods of reckoning, the “Pacif- ism.4 Even the Pacific-centered perspective proposed by ic Islands” has been narrowed from all physical land Australian scholars in the 1950s simply shifted the locus masses touching the Pacific Ocean to a subset of islands of island histories from metropolitan centers to the within the ocean that excludes those archipelagoes islands5 but still maintained the structural separation that are deemed socioculturally and linguistically more of colonizer and colonized. It is instructive to view the closely allied with continental Asian and southeast Asian eras of Euro-American colonization and societies. Among the islands usually excluded from as equally constitutive of Pacific Islands societies in discussions of the Pacific Islands are the order to begin to understand how historic preserva- (which includes present-day nations of and tion must not be limited only to marking the presence the ), as well as the , Okinawa, of others in the region, but more fundamentally must and . acknowledge the worlds and worldviews of Pacific The most widely adopted geographic schema is that Island societies themselves. imposed by the French explorer Jules Dumont d‘Urville, who commanded the Astrolabe on a global scientific and CARTOGRAPHIES (SEE TABLE A) cartographic expedition from 1826 to 1829. In the Pacific, The first problem that anyone new to the study of Pacific he spent time in , , , the Loyal- worlds encounters is how that space is defined. Does ty Islands, coastal New , the , it include all continental rims along the edges of the and the . In an 1832 article, Dumont ocean? Is it limited to islands within the ocean? Are we d‘Urville proposed classifying the Pacific islands into to draw distinctions between indigenous settlers and four broad : —referring to the islands subsequent waves of migrants, including descendants of of the East Indies; —referring to the islands European, American, and Asian settlers? A cartographic in the southwest Pacific islands populated by racially perspective helps to bring this complexity into view. dark islanders; —referring to the thousands The Pacific Ocean, at 162.25 million square kilome- of small islands across the northern Pacific from the ters (63.8 million square miles) comprises approximate- Marianas to the Marshall Archipelago; and Polyne- ly one-third of the earth’s surface and nearly half of its sia—including the islands within the triangle bound by oceanic waters. Its boundaries are Asia and Hawai‘i in the north, Rapa in the east, and New Zealand in the west, the in the east, the Ocean in the west.7 This schema continues to organize regional in the north, and in the south. The floor and scholarly endeavors. of the Pacific Ocean is made up of multiple tectonic Knowledge-making about the Pacific is also com- plates, atop of which sit islands numbering in the tens plicated by two other commonplace cartographical of thousands. conventions. First, world maps conventionally place Studies of paleogeography and sug- the at the center, which requires divid- gest that insular land masses result generally from two ing the Pacific Ocean in half, placing the eastern Pacific processes: 1) breakaways from continental crust; and on the left side and the western Pacific on the right.

A Sea of Islands: Early Foundations and Mobilities of Pacific Islanders 37 Scholars of the Pacific who adopt a Pacific-centered now separated into Australia, , , world map work in a context where such maps are and islands in eastern Indonesia).9 Nomadic bands considered “alternate” to the “standard” representation entering the area that comprises Australia’s North- of the world that centers the Atlantic Ocean. Second, ern are considered to be ancestors of the the placement of the in the Aborigines. Settlements in river basins, jungles, and Central Pacific (at the antipode of the Prime Meridian mountain valleys became the basis for the cultures of in Greenwich, ) underscores how dividing the Papuan-speaking peoples. Further Pleistocene-era world on world maps is logical and, thus, naturalized. voyaging extended settlement into the island archipel- Both frameworks function similarly to national borders agos off Sahul, comprising the present-day Bismarck on continental landmasses for which political purposes Archipelago and the Solomon Islands. often operate at odds with the networks of kin, commu- nities, and circuits of relations along such borders. 2. Several waves of migration by Austronesian-speak- ing peoples moved eastward from the region around EPOCHAL CHRONOLOGIES Taiwan. Linguistic analysis classifies the languages of I propose five epochs of peopling in the Pacific islands these peoples in the Austronesian language .10 that ultimately account for present-day multicultural islander populations on and off islands. 8 – Some migration trails moved through the northern Philippines and into the northern Pacific islands, into 1. The modern landmasses of Australia, Tasmania, and the southwestern region of Micronesia. New Guinea were settled between 30,000 and 60,000 years ago, as people moved from mainland Sunda (a – Other migration routes moved through and continental landmass covering the present-day Malay- intermixed Austronesian people with earlier Papuan sian peninsula and the islands of western Indonesia) settlers. Their descendants included the anthropolog- across a now-submerged land bridge into the Pleis- ically renowned “” circuits of long-distance tocene-era continent of Sahul (a connected landmass voyaging carrying tributes of shell necklaces and bracelets across hundreds of miles.

– Yet another migratory trail of Austronesian speakers moved south through the present-day Bismark Archi- pelago, the Solomon Islands, , , Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. These settlers are known for the production of ceramic “Lapita” pottery (named after an excavation site in New Caledonia). Important- ly, these people had produced the to sail and navigate great distances, with the intention of find- ing habitation by bringing along domesticated animals.

3. After the demise of the technology of Lapita pottery, voyages eastward from the central Pacific archipel- agos of Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa carried settlers into the island archipelagos of and the .

4. From this eastern Pacific center, the final great voyag- es of settlement across the longest stretches of open

Map of Sunda and Sahul. Made by Maximilian Dörrbecker (Chumwa) ocean were accomplished: for Wikimedia Commons, 2007.

38 AAPI National Historic Landmarks Theme Study • Eastward to Rapa; Indian and Pacific . The continuity of Indian • West-southwest through the to cultural influences is expressed in the label “East Indies,” (New Zealand); and one of many identifiers applied to the region over time. • Northward to the Hawaiian Islands. This world of trade and tribute empires drew in imperial ambitions from the and , and this is 5. European presence, dating from Spanish, Portugese, the “Pacific World” that drew mercantile interest from and Dutch interests in the so-called “East Indies,” Europeans and, eventually, Americans. So despite the followed by British, French, German, American, and fact that the islands of present-day Indonesia, the Phil- Japanese colonizations.10 ippines, and Okinawa (among others) are inhabited land masses within the boundaries of the Pacific Ocean, the Even as the three settlement sequences of Austrone- moniker “Pacific Islands” also draws a watery boundary sian-speaking peoples account for the peopling of between those island archipelagos directly engaged in islands and landmasses in the southwest, northern, and wider trade relations outside the Pacific and the remote eastern Pacific, histories accrued as intra- and interre- islands settled by Austronesian-speaking peoples that gional trade networks, migrations, warfare, and remained outside the circuits of Indo-Pacific trade until waxed and waned. Through much of these epic epochs the arrival of Europeans. of initial settlement, the central, northern, and eastern The advent of European presence beyond the East oceanic island groups had little or no interaction with Indies area began with the Spanish connecting colonial the island archipelagos adjacent to the , conquests in the Western Pacific with its possessions where sea lanes enabled trade and travel between the in the Americas through a trade circuit between the

Indigenous people from the Upper Ten of Tonga, c. 1918-1920. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

A Sea of Islands: Early Foundations and Mobilities of Pacific Islanders 39 Philippines and starting in the 1500s. It was not groups were passed from one government to another as until the 18th century that Britain, , , and spoils of war; some islanders were left out of diplomatic eventually the United States joined Spanish, Portuguese, negotiations altogether as jurisdictions were divided and Dutch presence in the Pacific by launching scien- among colonizers. And so it is that by the early 20th tific expeditions of . During this epoch, the century, the of every island group except the islands throughout the Pacific were gradually sight- Kingdom of Tonga passed over to European, American, ed, visited, and charted. Fascination with published or Japanese control. accounts from these voyages contributed to two devel- Reforms in land tenure opened the way to capitalist opments: 1) interest in islands in support of expanding agricultural development, which in turn necessitated trade circuits; and 2) interest in islanders’ salvation. In the importation of labor. Capitalists turned to Asia, the first schema, islands became nodes within global where socioeconomic conditions produced push factors capitalist developments that sought products for mar- alongside the pull factor of economic opportunity. Asian kets in Asia that could be traded for goods in demand in peoples made their way eastward to plantations across and the Americas. Islands were valued for stra- the islands as well as toward the Americas. Islanders, tegic locations as provisioning stations—including food, too, increasingly took advantage of new opportunities rest and recreation, and labor recruitment, especially available in metropolitan centers. And thus traceable is in the 19th century fur and whaling industries. Island a colonialist logic in the emigration of Pacific Islanders natural resources harvested into these trade circuits and the formation of diasporic communities along path- included exotic woods, beche-de-mer, and ways of colonial transits. products. In the second schema, islanders residing in Throughout the 20th century and early 21st cen- lush tropical climes fueled continental European philos- tury, Pacific islanders responded to regionally distinct ophers’ fascination with ideas of “noble savages;” these in varied ways. was widely depictions were refigured by Christian revivalists into embraced, and mission stations administered from fallen primitives to whom Christianity must be delivered. colonial metropoles morphed into independent synods. Simply put, European and American colonization in the Education at primary and secondary levels was deliv- Pacific Islands resulted out of European and American ered via Eurocentric curricula in colonial languages, in naval policing of European and American economic and turn weakening indigenous languages. Anthropological, religious interests. archaeological, and historical research on Pacific Island- Christianity was delivered to the Pacific by mis- ers, couched in the frameworks of , accul- sionaries primarily from England and the United States turation, and cultural loss, effectively figured islanders and, slightly later, from France. followed as objects and separated them from the production of traders into island ports and communities; they, in turn, knowledge about them. were followed by settlers. While austere beliefs promul- Island groups began attaining from gated by missionaries frequently clashed with libidinous colonial control beginning in 1960. At this writing, recreation sought by naval and mercantile crews, France still claims possession of French both missionaries and traders enjoyed the protection of and New Caledonia; Rapa Nui or Island is still their home governments in the form of colonial agents claimed by ; the country of remains a who were quick to use military force (often referred to dependent of New Zealand; and the United States has as “gunboat diplomacy”) to resolve conflicts between incorporated Hawai‘i as a state and still claims posses- Euro-American nationals and islanders. sion of the territories of and Guam. The web of benign and pugilistic Processes of decolonization in the later 20th centu- conquests across the Pacific is both intricate and ry are marked by both top-down and grassroots devel- unsystematic. Some islanders sought the protection opment. The South Pacific Commission (SPC), founded of one government to check aggression by another in 1947 by the six then-active colonial powers (Australia, government; some islanders waged protracted warfare France, the , New Zealand, United King- against colonial agents and militaries; some island dom, United States), laid the foundation for regional

40 AAPI National Historic Landmarks Theme Study ocean. While the precise impact varied from one location to the next, what they all shared was ways of life in which the ocean and its bounty figured into transactions of daily living and community cohesion. And finally, Islanders reaffirmed cultural kinship with each other. These ties had been presumed broken after indigenous long-distance voyaging ceased several centuries before the arrival of Europeans. Perhaps ironically, it was European explorers who noted commonalities of language and lifeways as they carried islander adventurers among island archipelagos. The epistemological paradigm shift that emerged is best captured in the essay published by scholar ‘Epeli Hau’ofa, titled “Our Sea of Islands”:

The world of our ancestors was a large sea full of places to ex- Indigenous people of , Cook Island, located in the South plore, to make their homes in, to breed genera- Pacific. Note Cook Islander native in indigenous clothing and head- wear, c. 1930-1940. Photo by Alfred T. Palmer, courtesy of the Library tions of seafarers like themselves. People raised of Congress. in this environment were at home with the sea. They played in it as soon as they could walk inter-governmental cooperation in scientific and eco- steadily, they worked in it, they fought on it. nomic development. Its membership currently includes They developed great skills for navigating their all 22 Pacific island countries and territories.11 (See Table waters, and the spirit to traverse even B for a list of Pacific Islands countries as of 2015.) Hawai‘i large gaps that separated their island groups. is excluded since it has gained full membership in the United States through statehood in 1959, but American Theirs was a large world in which peoples and Samoa and Guam, still U.S. territories, are members. cultures moved and mingled, unhindered by Grassroots activism, however, is the impetus boundaries of the kind erected much later by among islanders for the assertive groundswell of imperial powers. From one island to anoth- sociocultural self-determination that swept across the er they sailed to trade and to marry, thereby Pacific in the late 20th century. Islanders across the expanding social networks for greater flows of Pacific embraced indigenous cultural practices and wealth. They traveled to visit relatives in a wide connections, much of which had been disrupted by— variety of natural and cultural surroundings, to and devalued during—colonial territoriality. Islanders quench their thirst for adventure, and even to asserted their social and cultural relationships to their fight and dominate.12 environment, which in all cases was impacted by the

A Sea of Islands: Early Foundations and Mobilities of Pacific Islanders 41 From this islander-centered perspective, contemporary Knowledge systems of celestial and sociocultural developments are a logical extension of provide the means by which landfall could millennia-old lifeways around seafaring, environmental be attained, and return voyages could be accomplished: knowledge and stewardship, and the varied social orga- “Oceanic seafarers look to heavenly bodies, ocean nizations that emerged to support survival and manage swells, winds and other signs supplied by nature to natural and cultural resources. Although local distinc- set their course, steer, track their , make course tions emerged among linguistic and cultural groups over corrections and home in on islands before they can be centuries and millennia, those distinctions have accreted seen.”13 Navigators use their knowledge of the rising over a deep shared experience of understanding how to and setting positions of the sun, moon, and stars to set survive and prosper in a world dominated by the ocean their course and check their position. Throughout the and limited—initially—to the natural resources of volca- northern Pacific, navigators organized their knowledge nic islands and coral atolls. into local variants of star compasses. Those systems are the basis for the late 20th century revival of celestial nav- CULTURAL RUBRICS igation and renaissance of long-distance voyaging. Two rubrics capable of schematizing Pacific Islander Traditions and knowledge related to long-distance cultural histories are mobility and place. Each has the voyaging went on hiatus when voyaging ceased between capacity to frame discussions of islander experience; the most remote landmass outposts (especially Hawai‘i, together they offer capacious perspectives to understand Aotearoa/New Zealand, Rapa Nui/) and the cultural commonalities that trace back to shared Aus- Central Pacific island groups. Following what appears tronesian ancestry. Importantly, these perspectives also to be several centuries of isolation, those landmasses offer ascending of possibility to conversa- were reconnected by European and American in tions on historic preservation in the Pacific’s long duree. the epoch of colonial presence. Throughout this period, The rubric of mobility enables a conceptualization traces of epic voyaging and interactions remained in of the ocean as a means to move among islands. It is then oral tradition as well as in linguistic and archaeological possible to survey the range of involved in evidence. That evidence was the basis for theories of traveling across the ocean, from the oceangoing vessels original settlement across the Pacific in eastward to the means of navigating them across the water. While movements from the western Pacific. This evidence met canoes could be sufficient for everyday utilitarian sailing with a formidable competing of human settlement and moving along coastlines, seafaring vessels gained by accidental drift from the Americas on prevailing expanded scope through primarily three basic structural counterclockwise ocean currents in the southern hemi- configurations: the addition of a single , the sphere by people who lacked technologies of seafaring addition of double , and the joining of two and navigation. 14 canoes into one double-hulled vessel. Throughout the In response, an American based Pacific, basically three types of woven -mat in Hawai‘i launched an initiative to replicate a Hawai- sails are classified as the rectangular lugsail, the triangu- ian voyaging canoe and conduct a voyage navigating lar spritsail, and the triangular lateen sail. Spirituality, celestially without western scientific instruments. The respected through ritual practices, entered into many double-hulled canoe constructed for this venture was facets of canoe building and sailing from the identi- named Hôkûle‘a. Although was no fication and gathering of raw materials, through the longer practiced in Hawai‘i or proximate island groups, construction processes, and to the preparations for an unbroken tradition of celestial navigation had con- embarking on journeys and ensuring the safe passage of tinued in the islands across the present-day Federated those aboard. The ocean, as the of the god most States of Micronesia. The navigator was widely known as Tangaroa, thus required obeisance brought from to Hawai‘i, where he studied star marked by ritual practices that governed conduct on the locations in the eastern Pacific at the Museum ocean, as well as harvesting of its resources for human Planetarium, apprenticed Native Hawaiian waterman use and consumption. in his techniques of wayfinding,

42 AAPI National Historic Landmarks Theme Study and successfully sailed Hôkûle‘a to Tahiti and back in Hawaiian Islands. 1976.15 In 1980, Nainoa Thompson successfully navigat- In contrast to the rubric of mobility, the rubric of ed Hôkûle‘a on the same route using celestial means of place encompasses the physical geography and ecology, wayfinding. 16 Hôkûle‘a‘s successes sparked the revival of and the systems of stewardship to support all aspects canoe building, celestial navigation, and long-distance of daily living. Intimate knowledge of the environment, voyaging across the Pacific islands.17 More important- combined with keen awareness of the limitations of nat- ly, indigenous wayfinding was a powerful trope for resources on and surrounding islands, was manifest assertions of stepping away from colonialist knowledge in systems of stewardship that could ensure survival and regimes and asserting universal of cultural . Shelter, attire, and sustenance were drawn sovereignty and self-determination. from endemic natural resources, as well as the pigs, From the deck of a double-hulled sailing vessel, chickens, , and plants transported initially by set- the material traces of mobility of interest to historic tlers and subsequently by residents and visitors; cattle, preservation efforts extend beyond archaeological sheep, goats, and other animals came with Europeans sites where artifacts have been unearthed, to consider and Americans (in many cases to great environmental sites of living activity—sites significant for ensuring the destruction). Needs to support growing populations led continued supply of raw materials, sites that accommo- to the development of systems of cultivation and irriga- date the construction and maintenance of oceangoing tion. Needs to regulate the management, accumulation, vessels, and sites upon which knowledge is transmitted and distribution of resources were closely aligned with across generations. the development of political systems. And ultimately, In addition to documenting the record of mobility the mysteries of life itself gave rise to a panoply of gods, on the ocean, there is the more fundamental matter of demigods, and other deities of varying divine status, appreciating the very ocean that is traversed. In this as well as rich sets of cosmologies and mythologies. context, marine national monuments, administered by Linguistic analysis has demonstrated that the major gods the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Tane and Tangaroa, the superheroes Maui and Rata, (NOAA), are raising awareness of the ocean as a focus of and the cosmology of a Skyfather and Earthmother were preservation. The Papahãnaumokuãkea Marine Nation- shared across much of the Eastern Pacific. al Monument was first established in 2006 over 140,000 The land-based rubric of place is more directly link- square miles. Declared by UNESCO a World Heritage able with discourses of historic preservation. Where in Site in 2010, its citation states the following: the landscapes are the traces not only of settlement, but of interaction in circuits of transit, exchange, conquest, The area has deep cosmological and traditional and tribute? One model to look to is the archaeological significance for living Native Hawaiian culture, ruins of along the eastern shore of Pohn- as an ancestral environment, as an embodiment pei Island, in what is presently the Federated States of of the Hawaiian concept of kinship between Micronesia. Declared a National Historic Landmark people and the natural world, and as the place in 1985 when was still part of the U.S. Trust where it is believed that life originates and to Territory of the Pacific, Nan Madol was designated a where the spirits return after death. . . . Much World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2016. The citation of the monument is made up of pelagic and reads in part: deepwater habitats, with notable features such as seamounts and submerged banks, extensive Nan Madol is a series of more than 100 coral reefs and lagoons. off the south-east coast of Pohnpei that were constructed with walls of basalt and coral In 2016, President Barack Obama extended the mon- boulders. These islets harbour the remains of ument to the limit of the stone , temples, tombs and residential to encompass 583,000 square miles of ocean waters domains built between 1200 and 1500 CE. These surrounding the islands and atolls of the northwestern ruins represent the ceremonial centre of the

A Sea of Islands: Early Foundations and Mobilities of Pacific Islanders 43 Native people of the South Sea Islands, c.1918-1920. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Saudeleur , a vibrant period in Pacific must account for settlement and habitation as well Island culture. The huge scale of the edifices, as mobility and transit. While settlement and habita- their technical sophistication and the concen- tion will always be examined in relation to place, the tration of megalithic structures bear testimony concept of mobility will always bring with it possibil- to complex social and religious practices of the ities of encounter and exchange with others. Pacific island societies of the period.18 Islanders enact relationships of indigeneity to island homelands, and these relationships are always going Nan Madol bears witness to social relations and political to render them distinct from Asians who have estab- systems operating on an imperial scale centuries before lished multi-generational communities—over multiple the arrival of Euro-American imperial projects, when generations—in the United States. But Pacific Islander islanders were moving among and between places using histories of mobility also offer possibilities of interac- indigenous technologies and epistemologies to order tion with Americans of Asian ancestry across centuries their worlds and their places within. of circulation and transit. We would do well to be open In conclusion, a historical overview of the Pacific to witnessing such moments, places, and movements of Islands before the arrival of Europeans and Americans Pacific Islander experience.

44 AAPI National Historic Landmarks Theme Study Endnotes 11 “,” Wikipedia (acc. 10, 2016). 1 For critical discussion on “Pacific Rim” constructions, 12 See Epeli Hau’ofa. "Our Sea of Islands" in The Contem- see the essays in Arif Dirlik, ed., What Is In a Rim? Critical Per- porary Pacific 6/1 (1994), 148-61. Reprinted in Epeli Hau‘ofa, We spectives on the Pacific Region Idea (Taipei: Westview Press, 1993). Are the Ocean (: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), 2 See, for example, J. Kêhaulani Kauanui, “Asian Amer- 27-40. ican Studies and the ‘Pacific Question,” in Asian American Studies After Critical Mass, edited by Kent A. Ono (Malden, MA: 13 and Sam Low, “Navigation,” in Vaka Moa- Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 123-144. na: Voyages of the Ancestors, edited by K. R. Howe (: David Bateman, 2006), 155. 3 See Damon I. Salesa, “The Pacific in Indigenous Time.” In David Armitage and Alison Bashford, eds, Pacific Histories: 14 These speculations were fueled further by the 1947 Ocean, Land, People (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 31-52. drifting of the balsa raft named “Kon-Tiki” from to Raroia in the Tuamotu islands by the Norwegian ethnographer and ad- 4 This is the prevailing perspective developed particu- venturer , documented in his best-selling book larly among , who viewed much of their early The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South (: 20th-century fieldwork as salvage ethnography. Archaeological Allen & Unwin, 1950). scholarship buttressed perspectives of cultural loss after Euro- pean arrival by pointing out the material differences between 15 Ben R. Finney, Hôkûle‘a: The Way to Tahiti (NY: Dodd, then-contemporary islanders and the evidence of lifeways Mead, 1979). being dug up. Because the technology of literacy in the Pacific 16 The process by which Hawaiian navigator Nainoa is largely due to the efforts of Christian missionaries whose Thompson learned from master Satawalese navigator Mau agenda was directed at preaching the word of God in the Bible, Pialug is related in Sam Low, Hawaiki Rising: Hokule’a, Nainoa anthropologists and historians alike privileged the written Thompson, and the (Honolulu: Islands documents of voyagers and government administrators over Heritage, 2013). orally-transmitted systems of knowledge, and even, in places 17 Ben R. Finney, Voyage of Rediscovery: A Culture Odys- such as Hawai‘i and New Zealand, where indigenous-language sey Through Polynesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, presses flourished by the late 19th century. 1994), and Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors: Reviving Polyne- 5 J. W. Davidson, “The Problem of Pacific History,”Jour - sian Voyaging (Honolulu: Press, 2003). nal of Pacific History 1 (1966), 5-21. 18 "Nan Model: Ceremonial Centre of Eastern Micronesia 6 For a succinct overview, see Vincent E. Neall and Steven (1503)" at UNESCO, World Heritage Convention, accessed on A. Trewick. “The age and origin of the Pacific Islands: a geolog- Dec. 12, 2016, at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1503. ical overview.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363 (2008), 3293-3308. References 7 Jules-Sébastian-César Dumont d‘Urville, “Sur les îles Armitage, David, and Alison Bashford, eds. Pacific Histo- du Grand Océan,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie 17 (Paris: ries: Ocean, Land, People. : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Société de Géographie, 1832). Translated by Isabel Ollivier, An- Campbell, Ian C. Worlds Apart: A History of the Pacific Islands. toine de Biran, and Geoffrey Clark, “On the Islands of the Great , NZ: Canterbury , 2016 Ocean,” Journal of Pacific History 38 (2003), 163-174. Davidson, J. W. “The Problem of Pacific History.” Journal of 8 For an overview, see the essays in Vaka Moana / Voyages Pacific History 1 (1966), 5-21. of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific, edit- Denoon, Donald, et al, eds. The Cambridge History of The Pacific ed by K. R. Howe (Auckland: David Bateman, 2006). Islanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 9 For a synthesis of archaeological scholarship on which Desmond, Jane C. Staging : Bodies on Display from theories of settlement are based, see Patrick Vinton Kirch, On Waikiki to Sea World. Chicago: University of Chicago the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Press, 1999. Islands Before European Contact (Berkeley: University of Diaz, Vicente. “To ‘P’ or Not To ‘P’? Marking the Territory California Press, 2000). Between Pacific Islander and Asian American Studies.” 10 Scholarship on European presence in the Pacific Journal of Asian American Studies 7 (2004), 183-208. divides into two foci. On Dutch and Portugese activity in the Dirlik, Arif, ed. What is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the western Pacific as well as Spanish activity that links the western Pacific Region Idea. Taipei: SMC Publishing, 199e. Pacific and , see Matt Matsuda, Pacific Worlds Dumont d‘Urville, Jules-Sébastian-César. “Sur les îles du Grand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). On Island-fo- Océan,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie 17 (Paris: cused histories, see Howe, Campbell, The Cambridge History Société de Géographie, 1832). Translated by Isabel Ollivier, of the Pacific Islanders, edited by Donald Denoon (Cambridge: Antoine de Biran, and Geoffrey Clark, “On the Islands Cambridge University Press, 1997). of the Great Ocean,” Journal of Pacific History 38 (2003),

A Sea of Islands: Early Foundations and Mobilities of Pacific Islanders 45 163-174. Salesa, Damon. “The Pacific in Indigenous Time.” In Armitage Finney, Ben. Hokule’a: The Way to Tahiti. NY: Dodd, Mead and and Bashford, eds, Pacific Histories, pp. 31-52. Co., 1979. Tchen, John Kuo Wei and Dylan Yeats, eds., Yellow Peril! An _____. Voyage of Rediscovery: A Culture Odyssey Through Poly- Archive of Anti-Asian Fear. London: Verso, 2014. nesia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. _____. Sailing in the Wake of Ancestors: Reviving Polynesian Voyaging. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2004. Hau‘ofa, Epeli. “Our Sea of Islands,” in A New Oceana: Redis- covering our Sea of Islands, eds. E. Hau‘ofa, Vijay Naidu, and Eric Waddell. : University of the South Pacific and Beake House, 1993. Hau‘ofa, Epeli. We Are The Ocean. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008. Heyerdahl, Thor. The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the . London: Allen & Unwin, 1950. Howe, K. R. Where the Waves Fall: A New South Sea Islands History from First Settlement to Colonial Rule. Honolulu: University of Press, 1988. Howe, K. R., ed. Vaka Moana / Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific. Auckland: David Bateman, Ltd., and Auckland War Memorial Museum, 2006. Howe, K. R., Robert C. Kiste and Brij V. Lal, eds. Tides of Histo- ry: The Pacific Islands in the Twentieth Century. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. Kauanui, J. Kêhaulani. “Asian American Studies and the ‘Pacific Question.‘” In Asian American Studies After Critical Mass, edited by Kent A. Ono (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publish- ing, 2005), 123-144. Kirch, Patrick Vinton. The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the Oce- anic World. London: Blackwell, 1997. _____. On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact. Berkeley: Univer- sity of California Press, 2000. _____. Unearthing the Polynesian Past: and Adven- tures of an Island Archaeologist. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015. Kyselka, Will. An Ocean in Mind. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987. Lewis, David. We, The Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfind- ing in the Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994. Low, Sam. Hawaiki Rising: Hokele’a, Nainoa Thompson, and the Hawaiian Renaissance. Honolulu: Island Heritage, 2012. Matsuda, Matt. Pacific Worlds: A History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Neall, Vincent E. and Steven A. Trewick. “The Age and Origin of the Pacific Islands: A geological overview.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 363 (2008), 3293-3308.

46 AAPI National Historic Landmarks Theme Study TABLE A Major European & American Scientific Expeditions in the Mapping of the Pacific Islands

COMMANDER DATES NATIONAL FLAG PACIFIC LANDFALLS Antonio de Abreau & 1512 Moluccas Islands Francisco Serrao

Ferdinand Magellan 1519-1522 Portugal Guam

Toribio & 1525-26 Portugal Caroline Islands Diego de Saavedra

Alvaro de Saavedra 1528 Islands

Alvaro de Mendana 1568 Spain Solomon Islands,

Alvaro de Mendana 1595 Spain Marquesas Islands

Pedro Fernandes de Queiros 1606 Spain Vanuatu

Willem Schouten & 1616 Dutch To n g a

Abel Tasman 1643-1644 Dutch Tasmania, New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, Fiji

Samuel & 1764-1766 British Tuamotu archipelago, Tokelau

Samuel Wallis 1766-1768 British Tahiti

Louis Antoine de Bougainville 1766-1769 French Samoa, Tahiti

James Cook 1768-1771 British Tuamotu & , of New Zealand, New

James Cook 1772-1775 British Easter Island, Marquesas Islands, Tahiti & Society Islands, Cook Islands, , Tonga Islands, , New Caledonia, , Palmerston Island

James Cook 1776-1780 British Tasmania, New Zealand, Mangaia, Palmerston Island, Tonga Islands, Tahiti, Hawaiian Islands

Laperouse 1785-1788 French Hawaiian Islands, Samoa Islands, Tonga Islands, Australia

D‘Entrecasteaux 1791-1793 French Australia, Solomon Islands

William Bligh 1787-1789 British Tahiti

William Bligh 1791-1793 British Tahiti

George Vancouver 1791-1795 British Australia, Hawaiian Islands

James Wilson, 1797 British ship

Adam Johann von Krusenstern 1803-1806 Russia Marquesas Islands, Hawaiian Islands

Otto von Kotzebue 1815-1818 Russia Society Islands, Samoa Islands, Hawaiian Islands,

Louis Claude de Saulces Freycinet 1817-1820 French , , Moluccas, Samoa Islands, Hawaiian Islands

Louis Isidore Duperry 1822-1825 French

A Sea of Islands: Early Foundations and Mobilities of Pacific Islanders 47 Table A Continued

COMMANDER DATES NATIONAL FLAG PACIFIC LANDFALLS

Otto von Ktozebue 1823-1826 Russia Society Islands, Samoa Islands, Hawaiian Islands, , New Caledonia

George Anson Byron 1824-1825 Britain Hawaiian Islands

Jules Dumont-D‘Urville 1826-1829 French Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Loyalty Islands

Charles Wilkes 1838-1842 American Tuamotu Islands, Samoa Islands, Australia, Fiji, Hawaiian Islands

TABLE B 2015: Contemporary Political Entities

NAME STATUS NOTES Australia Independent 1788 – British of New South established nation; 1901 – Federation of into of Australia as a member of of the Commonwealth 1942/1939 – 1931 Statute of formally ended constitutional of Nations links between Australia and 1951 – Australia establishes military alliance with United States under ANZUS

New Zealand Independent; 1840 – empowers British colonization member of 1907 – New Zealand proclaimed a self-governing dominion of the British Empire Commonwealth 1947 – New Zealand adopts Statute of Westminster formally ending of Nations constitutional links

Hawai‘i State of the United 1795 – Unification of major islands into Kingdom of Hawaii States of America 1840 – First constitution ratified 1893 – Overthrow of independent kingdom 1894 – Republic of Hawaii declared 1898 – Annexation to United States as incorporated and organized territory 1959 – Statehood granted

Guam Unincorporated 1565 – Spain claims Guam and Northern Marianas territory of the 1898 – After Spanish-American War, Spain cedes Guam to United States Unites States of America

Commonwealth U.S. Territory with 1565 – Spain claims Northern Marianas islands of the Northern Commonwealth 1899 – Northern Marianas Islands sold to Germany Marianas Islands status 1919 – Northern Marianas included in South Pacific Mandate granted by to Japan 1947 – League of Nations revokes South Pacific Mandate and establishes Trust Territory of the Pacific, to be administered by United States 1986 – Trust Territory terminated; Northern Marianas negotiates new status as commonwealth in political union with United States

Federated States Independent; 1528 – Spain claims Uliti islands of Micronesia in free association 1885 – Spain declares sovereignty over Caroline Islands with United States 1899 – Caroline Islands sold by Spain to 1914 – Japan invasion and occupation 1920 – Caroline Islands included in South Pacific Mandate granted by League of Nations to Japan 1947 – League of Nations revokes South Pacific Mandate and establishes Trust Territory of the Pacific, to be administered by United States 1986 – Trust Territory terminated;

48 AAPI National Historic Landmarks Theme Study NAME STATUS NOTES Republic Independent; 1574 – Incorporated into of Belau in free association 1899 – Northern Marianas Islands sold to Germany (formerly ) with United States 1920 – Palau included in South Pacific Mandate granted by League of Nations to Japan 1944 – US took control after Battle of 1947 – League of Nations revokes South Pacific Mandate and establishes Trust Territory of the Pacific, to be administered by United States 1981 – Republic of Palau established 1994 – Trusteeship terminated; full sovereignty achieved under Compact of Free Association with U.S.

Republic of the Independent; 1528 – Incorporated into Spanish East Indies Marshall Islands in free association 1884 – Sold by Spain to German Empire with United States 1920 – Marshall Islands included in South Pacific Mandate granted by League of Nations to Japan 1943-1944 – US took control as part of Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign in World War II 1947 – Marshall Islands included in Trust Territory of the Pacific, established by League of Nations to be administered by United States 1986 – Trust Territory terminated; full sovereignty achieved under Compact of Free Association with U.S.

Samoa Independent 1899 – Tripartite Convention formally partitioned Samoan archipelago; western islands became a German colony, and the eastern islands became a U.S. territory 1920 – League of Nations conferred a Class C Mandate over the former German Colony of Samoa to the , and named “Western Samoa Trust Territory” 1962 – Independence gained as Western Samoa 1997 – Name changed to Independent State of Samoa

U.S. Territory of Unincorporated 1899 – Tripartite Convention formally partitioned Samoan archipelago; American Samoa territory of the U.S. western islands became a German colony, and the eastern islands became a U.S. territory

Cook Islands Independent; 1888 – British established in free association 1901 – Cook Islands included in with New Zealand 1965 – Independence granted by New Zealand

To n g a Kingdom 1900-1970 – Kingdom entered into a protected state under a Treaty of Friendship with Britain 1970 – Tonga joined the 1999 – Tonga became a member of the

Republic of Fiji Independent 1874 – Cession to Britain 1970 – Independence granted from Britain

Kiribati Independent nation; 1892 – British protectorate declared over Gilbert & Ellice Islands Commonwealth 1916 – Gilbert & Ellice Islands Colony of Nations 1979 – Independence from Britain

Tu va l u 1892 – British protectorate declared over Gilbert & Ellice Islands 1916 – Gilbert & Ellice Islands Colony 1974 – Independence

Tokelau Territory of 1877 – British protectorate declared New Zealand 1916 – Annexed into Gilbert & Ellice Islands Colony 1926 – Removed from Gilbert & Ellice Islands Colony and placed under jurisdiction of New Zealand 1949 – Sovereignty transferred from United Kingdom to New Zealand

Niue Independent; 1901 – Niue included in Colony of New Zealand in free association 1974 – Independence gained with New Zealand

A Sea of Islands: Early Foundations and Mobilities of Pacific Islanders 49 NAME STATUS NOTES Solomon Islands 1893 – British protectorate declared 1978 – Independence gained

New Caledonia 1854 – French 1946 – French territory 1999 – Special collectivity status extended

Republic of 1906 – British-French Condominium established to administer islands jointly Vanuatu 1980 – Independence gained

French French overseas 1842 – French protectorate declared over Society & Marquesas Islands Polynesia/ collectivity 1880 – Status changed from protectorate to colony; France claimed Polynesie Tuamotu archipelago francaise 1889 – claimed 1946 – Status changed to overseas territory 2003 – Status changed to overseas collectivity

50 AAPI National Historic Landmarks Theme Study